Root Canal — The Road to Pain Relief
Each year in the United States, about 15 million root canal procedures are performed, helping millions to find much-needed relief from pain and, perhaps more importantly, help them hold onto their teeth.
Bonding or Veneers: Which Is Best for Me?
Your teeth are in fairly good shape, but some minor imperfections or discoloration stand in the way of the smile of your dreams.
Through our cosmetic dentistry services, the dental experts here at Peninsula Dental Excellence, including Drs. Colin Au and Jeff Yoshihara, have the tools you need to meet your goals. While there are many ways we can makeover your smile, dental bonding, and dental veneers are among the more popular.
Here, we review each of these excellent options so that you can decide which treatment will bring out the best in your smile.
Dental bonding
With dental bonding, we apply a composite resin material to your teeth to address several different issues, including:
- A chipped or cracked tooth
- Discolored teeth
- Unevenly worn teeth
- Gaps between teeth
Think of dental bonding as a sculptor does clay. We shape the composite resin over your tooth to hide the imperfection, and then we harden the resin with ultraviolet light.
We can also color the composite resin so that it fits in seamlessly with your existing teeth, giving you a uniform row of teeth you’ll be proud to show off.
Dental veneers
When it comes to covering up imperfections in your smile zone, dental veneers excel. With dental veneers, we place wafer-thin porcelain shells over the fronts of your teeth to hide:
- Discolored or stained teeth
- Chips and cracks
- Misshapen teeth
- Unevenly worn teeth
- Gaps between teeth
To make room for the veneers, we remove a thin layer of enamel from your teeth, at which point we take an impression and send these data to a lab lab to custom manufacture your veneers. When your veneers are ready, you return to our office, and we bond them into place.
Bonding versus veneers
While bonding and veneers can greatly improve your smile, some key differences exist.
A comparison of materials
First, dental veneers, made from stain-resistant porcelain, will resist discoloration and staining better than composite resin. The porcelain is also stronger than the composite resin we use for bonding. As a result, dental veneers last longer — 10 years or more — while bonding lasts 3-10 years.
Comparing economics and time
Dental bonding is a good option economically speaking as the treatment costs less than veneers. We can also perform dental bonding in just one visit and don’t need to use any anesthesia in most cases.
With dental veneers, you’ll need to visit our office a few times so that we can prepare your teeth and then place the veneers.
If you’re comparing time and financial considerations in the future, veneers may make more sense as they last longer and won’t need replacing as often as bonding.
A permanent or temporary solution
If you opt for dental veneers, this decision is permanent as we remove enamel from your teeth to make room for your veneers. With dental bonding, your commitment isn’t as great as we don’t alter your teeth in any way.
Ultimately, we find dental veneers are great for people who want a complete smile makeover, while bonding is a great solution for quick fixes of problems like chips, cracks, and gaps.
In the end, the decision is yours to make, and we’re happy to provide you with any additional information you might need. Please contact our office in Mountain View, California, to learn more about dental bonding and veneers.
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